News

Bill’s witch hunt

The ABC informs us that the Liberal Leader, Bill Stefaniak, has demonstrated his commitment to free speech and freedom of conscience by demanding all the MLA’s sign statutory declarations avowing they had nothing to do with the publication of Gary Kent’s email last week.

Obviously the plan is to get them all to sign and then unmask the plotter who will have then been shown to have broken the law and be forced to resign.

Well, you’d think so. Except that if Pratt was a spy, rather than an innocent aid worker, then it wouldn’t have been a good thing for the people who captured him. Who would have been within their rights to treat him as an enemy combatant. Which, at the time, would probably have meant shooting him

It also wouldn’t have been a good thing for the aid agency he was working for, since most of them provide humanitarian aid under the strict understanding that they are not trying to gather information for either side in any potential upcoming warfare (largely so that they can get into the area in the first place without getting shot at).

Mr Kent warned Mr Pratt in the email he had “resisted all attempts to do you in over spying allegations”, referring to the period in 1999 that Mr Pratt, then an aid worker, was held hostage in Yugoslavia after being suspected of espionage.